Why should not the knowledge, the skill, the expertness, the assiduity, and the spirited hazards of trade and commerce, when crown...ed with success, be entitled to give those flattering distinctions by which mankind are so universally captivated? Such are the specious, but false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with irresistible force, "Un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

There is a certain jargon, which, in French, I should call un Persiflage d'Affaires, that a foreign Minister ought to be perfectly... master of, and may be used very advantageously at great entertainments, in mixed companies, and in all occasions where he must speak, and should say nothing. Well turned and well spoken, it seems to mean something, though in truth it means nothing. It is a kind of political badinage, which prevents or removes a thousand difficulties, to which a foreign Minister is exposed in mixed conversations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest... risk, and what you say when you want it is, "Garçon! Un Pernod!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Whereas the child is chiefly playful and experimental, the adult focuses on specific and conscious experiences. He practices selec...tive inattention to the objects for which he has no immediate use and develops a kind of tunnel vision that helps him to move toward selected goals. This focusing on a limited range of experiences and goals is largely responsible for one's individual evolution and gives a deep and almost tragic significance to a statement made by Albert Camus in his novel La Chute: "Après un certain âge tout homme est responsable do son visage." An almost identical statement appears as the last entry in George Orwell's notebooks: "At 50, everyone has the face he deserves." There could not any more absolute affirmation of belief in personal responsibility for the quality of one's own life and character.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Sigmund Freud was once asked to describe the characteristics of maturity, and he replied: lieben un arbeiten ("loving and working"...). The mature adult is one who can love and allow himself or herself to be loved and who can work productively, meaningfully, and with satisfaction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the UN and what it means clear...ly. Everything will be all right--you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »